(Near) deadly drainage: in the Spring of 1954 this 20-foot culvert nearly claimed the lives of two. Image: City of Ottawa Archives / Andrews Newton CA003849 April 9, 1954.

Current road-building techniques don’t allow the city’s streets to be quite as riparian. Image: Google Maps, May 2016.

In 1954, the apartment developments along Blake Boulevard were quite new. Land in what was then known as Eastview was available for a song and builders like Sam Blake (for whom the street was named) and Marius Vachon were all too happy take advantage of the opportunity. Although the municipality’s red hot real estate market after the Second World War rendered the humiliation of being put under provincial management during the Depression a distant memory, its effect on Eastview’s infrastructure remained. This is aside from the fact that paved streets and storm sewer systems were still considered to be, in most municipalities, an optional “nice to have” in new developments, and could wait.